Meaningful Monday: Thoughtful Conversation

For starters, camping over the weekend was meaningful. Since I no longer have a job, I was able to spend the weekend with my family, enjoying the windy weather. Quite a change from the last camping trip, but it was fun. On Sunday, which has already been posted on, we just spent the day together after church, enjoying what God has blessed us with….one another: the children, the husband, and the wife as well as my parents and siblings.

My husband and I were able to have some much needed time, here and there, in which we could conversate without children’s ears. You know, all that good, adult responsibility kind of conversation. However, we were also able to focus on some conversation as husband and wife and friends, the kind of conversation every relationship needs to flourish. It’s the kind of the conversation in which you discover something new about the other. Through the reading I’ve been doing to help improve myself as a wife and a mother and strengthen my walk with God, I have discovered quite a few things about love and marriage that I didn’t know. For instance, I’ve known for a long time that falling in love is pretty simple, but staying in love and building the relationship after the initial oohs and aahs have subsided is a choice. Choosing to love someone is the hardest part when right smack dab in the middle of what feels like total hell. Argument and after argument and after yet another argument. Hurt feelings covered by anger. A heart full of love that has become over-shadowed by one that has been broken multiple times. This is true for most any relationship and choosing to love through all of it is where the loving gets hard and harder yet. What I didn’t know is when choosing love, a person is making a conscious choice to put the other above themselves even in the midst of all the pain. So many times when a person gets hurt, he or she withdraws. When choosing to love, said person continues to do things that show love even when he or she doesn’t feel love at the moment. And that’s the kind of love that lasts.

What else made my week so meaningful?

Father’s Day. I wrote a Father’s Day post for my dad, who doesn’t get on the computer much and doesn’t know I have a blog so getting the letter is only possible if I actually gave him a copy in hand.

Which I did!

I copied and printed what I posted on my blog to give him a hard copy. It was wonderful! My dad is not much of a talker when it comes to emotions, a trait I inherited from him (although I’m working on it and improving), but he needed to know everything that I wrote to him. I wanted to let him know that even though it appeared as if I wasn’t paying attention in my youth, I really was.

And you know what?

Later, after he read the letter and I seen him again, he seemed a little different. Happier. And that makes me happy.

The week got even better after I spent some time talking with a gentleman that I’m acquainted with because my children have befriended, but have not really gotten to know. When I say befriended, they talk with him when they see him out and about. I live in a small town and he used to sit in the coffee shop and when they’d see him there, they’d visit with him. He’s a friendly guy and when I did make the time to speak with him for a lengthy conversation, I found that he has many of the same values that my husband and I have and he follows the same religious teachings that we follow. He’s very interesting and quite smart.

Beings I am not much of a people person, I generally stick to myself and my family. I am the kind of person who keeps a few close people in my life and take others as they come and go. I am quite content to have one super awesome, life-long friend before claiming to have 100 friends that really aren’t friends. In that respect, when I befriend someone it’s because that someone has made an impression on my heart that nobody else can. I am not altogether certain if that’s the best way to be or not. A few things I’ve learned over the course of my life:

put God first. In everything. Marriage. Family relationships. Friendships. Work relationships. Everything. When God comes first, everything else will fall into place just as He has planned.

accept everyone. I don’t have to agree with their lifestyle choices, but I do have to love them and accept them for who they are.

say what I mean and mean what I say. This is a little harder because I tend to speak first and think later.

judgments are not mine to make. I’ve had a lot of influence socially wise when it comes to judging others. I have judged and I have been judged. I spend much time praying about this.

be kind. Always. Even when it’s hard! The other day someone responded on FB to something I posted and said it was wrong. I just remember thinking that the person who responded with that response doesn’t really know me so how could she make that response? You know what? It doesn’t matter. I’ve met her a few times, spent some time with her as an acquaintance/friend, but not an in-depth amount of time for her to say what she said, but I realize, whatever she thought she knew about me is not who the ‘me’ really is. I thought about unfriending her, but then decided I wasn’t going to. Maybe I mis-read her response.

As anyone knows, life is not easy. We don’t always get back what we give. Sometimes, it seems like we get taken advantage of.

But rest assured, what you get back at this time is not nowhere near as important as what God promises. Many times, my husband and I discuss how we feel as if we are getting taken advantage of, but in the end, we are only doing what God has called us to do. In those moments in which we complain about being taken advantage of we stop and remember the reason that we are so helpful.

And then it all makes sense once again.

I hope you all have a blessed day. Go out or stay in, but make your Monday just as meaningful 🙂